Despite the fact that I took photography in high school, my father taught it, we had a darkroom at the school that we'd use on the weekends, he had a darkroom at home that I wasn't allowed to touch, and hell, my first science fair entry was a shoebox pinhole camera, and from all of this, I spent a good chunk of time developing film and photos, all in black in white, none of which I still have before taking off to college where my time got eaten up by…ahem…studying, I held off for a while because I was nervous about how it would come out - perhaps dealing me a blow if it came back and thought to myself 'this is shite!' I had made 8x10s at Costco and they actually turned out fairly well (especially considering the price at $2 per), but twice the size? Never. Will the pixels and my processing hold up?

But I finally suppressed the nerves to a level low enough and for long enough to upload the image and hit 'checkout.' And boy am I glad I did! I got the thing delivered to my door in a few days, opened it and just stared. Smiling. Immediately hit up target and grabbed me a frame for the sucker. I've been so caught up in devices and screens and i this's and i thats strewn about from our pockets to our coffee tables to our desks, I forgot what it's like to hold up a tangible physical print. It felt great. And hanging it up on the wall felt good. Real good. Was actually a nice little confidence boost.

I don't need to say it, but it's pretty apparent photography has come quite a long way since them there high school daze. As has the paper. This stuff was slick, shiny, and elegant. I purposely chose an image (that you've all seen here before) that i thought would best do that sort of feel justice - my 'Slice of Yosemite Layer Cake', an image that has 3 starkly contrasting layers and textures; a background of slick snowy mountainside, a foreground comprised of a set of silhouetted pine trees, and a layer of rolling clouds that just hovered right in between them. Proved the perfect centerpiece for a few other 8x10s from that infamous winter Yosemite trip…